Brave Little Leiblings: The Alternate Reality of Music in 'Wolfenstein: The New Order'

When Jason Menkes and Ravi
Krishnaswami (pictured above) were charged with soundtracking an alternate universe ruled by the
Nazis, their mantra became “make it upbeat.” That bubble gum-smacking pop
sweetness is precisely what makes the soundtrack to Wolfenstein: The New
Order so damn creepy. Taking place in the 1960s, after Hitler has won World
War II and the Nazi party has successfully exterminated remnants of the Allies,
the Wolfenstein reboot chronicles the struggles of the resistance party
and the cultural landscape they find themselves in.

But even the most oppressive
regime in history wouldn’t be able to stop pop music from breaking out, says
Menkes and Krishnaswami, the partners behind COPILOT Strategic Music + Sound, the music content and strategy firm charged with creating Wolfenstein’s politically complex
soundtrack. Working closely with publisher Bethesda Softworks and AKQA
advertising firm, the COPILOT team not only recorded a complete soundtrack of
60s inspired tunes, all sung in German and encapsulating the ideals of the Nazi
party, but they also created a fake record label for the songs, complete with
fictional biographies of each musician, a retro late night commercial pushing the tunes,
and a record release party with a live German cover band at the PAX East game
conference in Boston this past April.

“If you listen to the
soundtrack, a lot of [the songs] are very happy and very light and real pop
music,” says Menkes, adding that the eight original tracks under the Neumond
Recording Company “label” run the gamut from surf rock to Beatles
knockoff tunes to psychedelic experimentations. “I think that was part of
the way we handled that, is to use this as an opportunity to show, not what the
reality of the Nazi universe would be, but how the Nazis might want to portray
their universe as a perfect setting.”

The result is deliciously
unsettling. As players blast through the morally bankrupt Nazi brigade, they
encounter various scenarios where radios have been left on and songs like the
trippy, sitar-heavy “I Am Everywhere”
[“Ich Bin Uberall”] or “Train
to Hamburg”[“Zug Nach Hamburg”], a peppy Nazi-fied
version of The Monkees’ “Last Train to
Clarksville,” pump through pixelated speakers.

“The darkness is not
always in the song writing itself, but in sort of the context surrounding where
these songs came from,” Ravi says, adding, “One of the basic premises
that we started with was if the Nazis were in power in the 60s, that music
would have gotten to this place. Regardless of it being a completely different
universe, rock ‘n’ roll would have happened. … Then it was just a matter of
thinking, well, how would it have happened in that universe specifically? What
would [the Nazis] have wanted to say to the youth culture if they had their ear?”

The team wasn’t without
precedent though. Hitler actually did have his own propaganda band, a prolific
group called Charlie
and His Orchestra, which lobbed thinly veiled messages about desertion
cached in toe-tapping swing rhythms at British and American soldiers.

“They would actually
play these on short-wave radio in the U.K. to try to lower morale,” Ravi
says. “We tried to use that as a guide to how our label might have worked
in the 1960s. Trying to create fake artists to either raise morale for the
German people or lower morale elsewhere, to reinforce their ideals through music.”

Creating a subtly pro-Nazi,
German-language soundtrack under a fake throwback record label isn’t without
its perils. All in-game music had to be original since licenses frequently
prevent songs from being used in conjunction with violent imagery or Nazi
ideals. The game marketing campaign was able to get away with using German
language covers of “House of the
Rising Sun,” which is currently available under public domain and
doesn’t require licensing, as well as John Lee Hooker’s bluesy “Boom Boom” and “Nowhere to Run” by Martha and the
Vandellas so long as neither song was used in conjunction with any Nazi imagery,
says Pete Hines, vice president of public relations and marketing for Bethesda.
Check out how the trailer below switches from cover song without Nazi symbols
to original tunes with imagery here:

Bethesda also had to be
extremely careful on the international marketing front, Hines adds.

“All of the [in-game]
lyrics had to be gone through and reviewed because in Germany, anything
associated with the Nazi party or certain symbols or certain words and phrases
are dealt with by the Constitution,” Hines explains. “We had to make sure that in the game in
Germany there weren’t lyrics that were singing about the Fuhrer or something
that would get us in trouble.”

The German version of Wolfenstein:
The New Order is indeed bereft of swastikas, refers to the Nazis simply as
the “Regime,” and includes a geo-locking system
that prevents users in either Germany or Austria from accessing other versions
of the game.

The team also had to be
conscious of keeping the soundtrack’s tone nuanced enough that it couldn’t be
interpreted incorrectly, taken out of context, or co-opted by neo-Nazi groups.

“There
are definitely some examples of songs that we would listen to the lyrics and be
like ‘Wow, that’s probably actually going too far,’” says Ed Davis,
account director for AKQA, the ad agency that headed up Bethesda’s marketing
push for the game and created the logo design and visual imagery
associated with the Neumond Recording Company label. “None of the songs
are overtly menacing, but if you do read between the lines a little bit you can
get some of the vibe of [the Regime’s] totalitarianism, but there’s def nothing
overt that anyone would latch onto in the wrong way.”

One
idea that hit the cutting room floor was a love song between the Sonny and
Cher-esque duo Karl & Karla originally titled “Blue Eyes Forever.” Feeling that the duet represented
supremacist ideals a bit too directly, the song was rewritten to focus on a
soldier missing his amour and the title was changed to “Brave
Little Liebling.”

“We wanted to make sure
that while we’re writing something that was going to be used as a propaganda
tool, we weren’t writing explicit propaganda songs that could apply to present
day,” Ravi says. “Going from “Blue
Eyes Forever” to “Brave Little
Liebling” was a great example of being careful not to cross any lines
and to represent Nazi ideals without being explicit in their promotion.”

Hines says that the music
also bypasses the uninvited audience problem to a certain extent simply by being
embedded in both a game and larger franchise that’s ardently anti-Nazi.

“Our game is about
shooting and killing Nazis, so it’s not particularly sympathetic towards Nazis.
I think if we were trying to cast them in a positive light or make them
sympathetic, we’d have a lot of troubles,” he says. “We joke about
this eternally and have for years, there’s really no more instantly
recognizable and hatable enemy than Nazis. In most other games, you need some
context for, well, why are these guys the bad guys? I don’t even know who they
are. They’re from some made up place or they’re a mob or whatever, but Nazis,
they’re Nazis. You don’t even have to think, you just shoot Nazis.”

The Wolfenstein music
has taken on a bit of a life of its own. Menkes and Krishnaswami’s pieces on
the Neumond Recording
Soundcloud page have each racked up over 25,000 plays while the label’s
official commercial has garnered nearly
35,000 YouTube views. The songs will soon be available for individual
purchase on iTunes and an actual album is in the works, but the side income
isn’t the real goal, says Hines.

“It’s more important that
[the music] support and extend the experience of the game rather than drive
them to be some alternative revenue source,” he says. “If it was that
easy, we’d get in the business of creating alternate history music soundtracks
and selling them and not bother with all of the time of making a AAA game.”

But Hines also acknowledges
how well an imaginative soundtrack can excite gamers, give an alternate
universe some depth, and attract some sweet press. Two years ago when Bethesda
released the heavily lauded assassin game Dishonored, the game’s spooky
sea shanty marketing campaign song, penned by COPILOT of course, became so popular it was
performed live at the Spike VGA Awards and spawned a remix competition among fans.

Even if Neumond Recording
Company’s fare falls short of those benchmarks, it’s a treat for fans to have a
soundtrack and marketing strategy that’s nearly as intriguing as the game
itself.

Wolfenstein: The New Order
is currently available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and
PC.